POST MORTEM (2020) Reviews of Hungarian ghost horror – now with UK release news

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Post Mortem is a 2020 Hungarian horror film about a photographer who confronts ghosts in a haunted village after World War One.

Directed by Péter Bergendy from a screenplay written by Piros Zánkay, based on a story co-written by Péter Bergendy and Gábor Hellebrandt.

The Szupermodern Stúdió production stars Viktor Klem, Fruzsina Hais, Judit Schell, Zsolt Anger and Andrea Ladányi.

Plot:
In the cold winter of 1918, Tomás (Viktor Klem), a young man who works doing post-mortem photography, ends up in a small Hungarian village. The strange nocturnal sounds, the hostility, the mysterious deaths and the sombre figures that appear in his photographs all urge him to leave as soon as possible.

Nonetheless, Tomás returns to the village to investigate the ghosts’ intentions and find a way to eradicate them…

Reviews:
” …the film ends up resembling something closer to Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (1999), complete with macabre visual setpieces that take it into full-blown gothic horror. While that might sound like tonal whiplash, the film manages to sell this turn with the subtly realized raising hysteria among the fearful villagers and the appealing, odd-couple detective pairing between its two central characters.” All Ones That Got Away

“A satisfying, spooky frightener, the painterly compositions recall the dreamy but natural landscapes of German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich, and its Eastern European superstitions meet the technological modern world echoes Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If Bergendy isn’t above throwing in the odd cheap jump scare, the film’s best moments rely more on phantasmagorical imagery and unsettling, surrealistic sequences.” CineVue

“While it has a few ups and downs and the horror is never quite as good as it was in the first act, it’s still a solid ghost story that’ll creep you out and hold your attention from beginning to end. It makes great use of our natural fear of death, even when the ghosts aren’t involved, and the human elements keep the story afloat when the scares take a bit of a backseat.” Horror Obsessive

“The film transcends the limits of a pure ghost story and conventional horror fare in a cross-over of genre filmmaking and arthouse cinema, boasting an appeal to the mainstream public. The film weaves social, psychological, and historical motifs, spiced up with delicate jump scares along with frenetic action scenes and coming-of-age melodrama in a post-modern cinematic patchwork.” Screen Anarchy

“This superb Hungarian ghost story is set just after the First World War and boasts some fantastic effects as well as an eerie atmosphere.” Starburst

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Release:
In the US, Post Mortem was released on Blu-ray and DVD by Shout! Factory on September 20, 2022. It is also available via Amazon Prime

Post Mortem will be released in the UK on Digital on October 31, 2022.

Related:
More ghost films
More Hungarian films

For the trailer and more movie info click the page 2 link below

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